The Resolution To Yellowjackets' Adam Storyline Makes No Sense, And That's Okay
This post contains spoilers for the "Yellowjackets" season 2 finale.
The season 2 finale of "Yellowjackets" is out, and fans aren't 100% thrilled. A lot of the backlash so far has centered around the death of adult Natalie (Juliette Lewis), a plot point that was arguably a little rushed and unsatisfying. The other major point of contention is with the resolution of the long-running Adam subplot. Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) killed a guy she was having an affair with in season 1, and after a full season of the police closing in on her, the situation's been resolved not through the actions of Shauna herself, but with the help of Walter (Elijah Wood), a man Shauna's never even met.
For a lot of fans, this conclusion is a little too convenient. It's made worse because Walter's whole plan doesn't hold up to scrutiny in the slightest. There's no way an experienced detective would casually accept a drink from a mysterious stranger he met 10 seconds ago, just as there are a million different ways that Walter's proposed narrative could backfire on the Yellowjackets. (The fact that Misty also tells Walter "I killed my best friend" five feet away from the police, with no repercussions, just adds insult to injury.)
Realistically, Walter's "solution" would open a whole new box of headaches to deal with, but the finale acts as if everything will be fine now. It's a deeply unserious resolution and some fans have complained, but is it really such a bad thing?
Yellowjackets' handle on reality: questionable at best
Let's go back to where this storyline began in earnest: Shauna stabs Adam to death, goes home, and then confronts her husband Jeff (Warren Kole) about the glitter in the closet. First Shauna finds out that Jeff's been the one blackmailing her, with the absurdly mundane motive of his furniture store not doing well. Then Jeff finds out Shauna's committed murder, and the guy she's murdered is also a guy she's been having an affair with. Shauna explains the situation by sheepishly saying, "I stabbed him, and now he's dead," and it's one of the funniest line deliveries in the whole show. It's only outshined by Jeff's "there's no book club?!" realization shortly afterward.
After nearly an entire season of suspecting Jeff of being a shady cheater not worth Shauna's time, it was refreshing and amusing to learn that Jeff was actually a deeply forgiving wife guy. He's not particularly bright, but he's unconditionally loyal and unwaveringly positive. He's known about Shauna's misdeeds in the wilderness this whole time, and he still loves her anyway.
"Yellowjackets" has always been a darkly comic show, but the constant little throwaway lines with Jeff this season is where the humor shines brightest. Him playing "F*** Tha Police" while his wife and daughter are being interrogated, him suggesting a spontaneous trip to Colonial Williamsburg to spice up their marriage, it's all great. Of course, his best moment is when he blows off steam in his car by listening to "Last Resort" by Papa Roach. It's a moment where you can just feel the writers winking at us, letting us know that while the female main characters are dark and complex, Jeff is thankfully not.
Don't talk to the police!
The Adam storyline also helped to subvert everyone's expectations around Callie (Sarah Desjardins), Shauna's teenaged daughter who seemed bratty and obnoxious at first, but who turned out to only need some honesty from her parents. Like with Jeff, we know that the smart thing for Callie to do is turn her mom in straight away, but when it turns out she's totally down with covering up a murder, it's both weirdly wholesome and (once again) very funny. These scenes of Shauna's family finally being open and nice with each other, juxtaposed with how horrifying this would all seem from an outside perspective, is the sort of thing that only "Yellowjackets" could pull off.
This leads us to the other insane thing about this storyline: the fact the entire Sadecki family can't help but constantly run their mouths off to their police. Misty tells Shauna early on in the season that the only words she should say to a detective are "I want my lawyer," but Shauna never does this, and she never even tries to advise her daughter to do this either.
Their attempts to cleverly outsmart the police almost work out at times (mainly because these detectives are established to not be that great at their jobs), but they always end up digging themselves in even deeper. Fans complained about this aspect too, pointing out how mind-numbingly stupid the whole family is for not asking for a lawyer, but Shauna's early conversation with Misty makes it clear that this stupidity wasn't an accident in the script. This whole storyline is a dark comedy of errors, and it was always going to be resolved in a comic manner.
What this show's really about
At the end of the day, "Yellowjackets" is about a group of traumatized, chaotic women and their way-too-supportive life partners. Taissa's got the ride-or-die love of Van, Shauna's got Jeff, and as of season 2, Misty's got Walter, another character who doesn't handle things ethically at all, but who is so helpful to our main characters that we've come to love him anyway. And even though Taissa's actual wife Simone is objectively a better person than Van, audiences like her way less because we know she can never truly be there for Taissa. Simone's a normal person, and that won't do.
It's a twisted yet strangely gentle take on the idea that all a person really needs to deal with their problems is someone who truly cares about them, someone who can help without any judgment or dishonesty. In season 1, all of the survivors we followed believed they had no one else they could turn to for their problems but the other survivors, which of course wasn't healthy because all of them were too messed up in their own special way to truly be of service to one another. With the Jeff reveal, the Walter introduction and the Van re-introduction, the surviving members of the original quartet are all finding their genuine support groups, made up of people who are unconditionally loving and dependable.
Shifting sense of reality
In addition to being a show about ride-or-die partners, "Yellowjackets" is a show about subjectivity. Is there something supernatural going on in this show, or are these supernatural elements just manifestations of the characters' many mental health issues? Outside of the magic tree Coach Ben's now living in, it's not really clear, and it doesn't need to be. The show is told from the warped perspective of the Yellowjackets teammates; if the characters accept the supernatural, so should we.
With that in mind, Walter's successful manipulations throughout this episode are a parallel to that convenient gust of wind at the beginning of the season, or the convenient bear from season 1. The fact that he pulled it off could be a lucky coincidence, or it could be the wilderness's way of rewarding the group for Natalie's sacrifice. Yes, most of Walter's plan unfolds before Natalie's death, but think of it from Shauna's perspective: she sees Natalie die, then she finds out that all of her problems have been magically solved by a complete stranger.
The resolution to Adam's murder isn't just intentionally funny; it's also specifically designed to push Shauna back into the wilderness cult she was part of as a teen. She says in the finale that the dark stuff was "just us," but Walter's miraculous intervention seems designed to make her second-guess herself. From the start of the show, "Yellowjackets" has been using implausible events to hint at the supernatural, to push the characters in a darker direction. The resolution to Adam's murder is just doing the same thing. It might still feel a little lazy to some viewers, but it's definitely not out of step with anything we've seen so far.